Medicine Hat becomes the first city in Canada to eliminate homelessness

[msommers]

Medicine Hat, a city in southern Alberta, pledged in 2009 to put an end to homelessness. Now they say they've fulfilled their promise.

No one in the city spends more than 10 days in an emergency shelter or on the streets. If you've got no place to go, they'll simply provide you with housing.

"We're pretty much able to meet that standard today. Even quicker, actually, sometimes," Mayor Ted Clugston tells As It Happens host Carol Off.

Housing is tight in Medicine Hat. Frequent flooding in the past few years didn't help matters. With money chipped in by the province, the city built many new homes.

Clugston admits that when the project began in 2009, when he was an alderman, he was an active opponent of the plan.

"I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't,'" he says. "However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense."

Clugston says that it costs about $20,000 a year to house someone. If they're on the street, it can cost up to $100,000 a year.

"This is the cheapest and the most humane way to treat people," he says.

"Housing First puts everything on its head. It used to be, 'You want a home, get off the drugs or deal with your mental health issues,'" Clugston says. "If you're addicted to drugs, it's going to be pretty hard to get off them, if you're sleeping under a park bench."

I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around.

- Medicine Hat Mayor Ted Clugston
And the strategy has worked. In Medicine Hat, emergency room visits and interactions with police have dropped. But there was one change that initially surprised Clugston — court appearances went up.

"They end up dealing with their past, atoning for their sins," he says.

Clugston believes that no one on the streets is unreachable.

He says city staff found housing for one man, but he insisted on leaving to sleep under cars. Day after day, they'd search him out and take him back to his new home.

"They did it 75 times, but they had the patience and they didn't give up on him and, eventually, he ended up staying in the house," he says. "Ultimately, people do want a roof over their heads."

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/...ypes=og.shares

[Sugarphreak]

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[msommers]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
So basically instead of focusing on job training, breaking addiction problems, and learning to be a contributing member of society; the local tax payers are just picking up the tab for free housing and forcing them to live there instead.

Our plan to end homelessness here should be buying bus tickets to send them off to Medicine Hat where they will be given a house to live in. Win-Win all around... except for you know, tax payers in the Hat, and anybody that lives near the crime ridden slums these places will undoubtedly turn into.

Wow.

[spike98]

This article is complete bullshit. Having lived in medicine hat for 30 years i know that there is still very much a homeless presence in the area.

The key sentence in the article is:

No one in the city spends more than 10 days in an emergency shelter or on the streets. If you've got no place to go, they'll simply provide you with housing.

Its shelter policy that they give you the boot at 10 days so its obvious why no one spends more than that time in a shelter. Then they find a park bench or alley to crash for a few days then its back into a shelter for another 10.

These homes are also slums that get treated like shit and will be much like the reserve housing you see handed out.

Instead of trying to house these people, they should focus on rehabing the ones that want it and jailing the ones that make the city (cough downtown timmies) unsafe.

[JRSC00LUDE]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
............

It's ranty Wednesday haha

[Sugarphreak]

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[msommers]

Originally posted by spike98
This article is complete bullshit. Having lived in medicine hat for 30 years i know that there is still very much a homeless presence in the area.

The key sentence in the article is:



Its shelter policy that they give you the boot at 10 days so its obvious why no one spends more than that time in a shelter. Then they find a park bench or alley to crash for a few days then its back into a shelter for another 10.

These homes are also slums that get treated like shit and will be much like the reserve housing you see handed out.

Instead of trying to house these people, they should focus on rehabing the ones that want it and jailing the ones that make the city (cough downtown timmies) unsafe.

I have to agree the title was rather ambitious and honestly not accurate since it meets some cutoff that the program director set out as "the end". But the overall premise is positive. This again goes towards that catch-phrase of "social value" where overall tax dollars spent are decreasing and people's lives are actually improving. That is a win-win.

Ending homelessness has so many variables that to be perfectly honest, no one here has the solution. I mean real, honest solutions. It's an extremely complex issue. I've only seen the tip of the iceberg that is homelessness, and I work in the field dealing with shelter, detox facilities and housing programs such as these described in the article.

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


I am not trying to be a dick, it is true

Anytime you just give housing away, it turns into a huge mess

Money is better spent on trying to help people with the problems that have landed them on the street, not stuffing them into housing units so you don't see them anymore. It just creates a larger problem.

Just because you say it's true, doesn't make it so.

You also have no idea how housing programs work.

[Sugarphreak]

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[blitz]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
So basically instead of focusing on job training, breaking addiction problems, and learning to be a contributing member of society; the local tax payers are just picking up the tab for free housing and forcing them to live there instead.

Because it's easy to do job training, break your addiction and contribute to society when you're homeless.

Tax payers are already paying for the homeless via medical care and law enforcement, and the cost to the system is staggering.

[Sugarphreak]

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[Mixalot27]

I have been staying in Medicine Hat for the last week or so. I don't know what the homeless situation is like. I do notice I get asked for money a similar amount to in Calgary. I have been given the ran out of gas line twice and a deaf mute approached me and handed out a card asking for money.

[msommers]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


Well according to this article, they chase around the homeless population and force them to live in a house.

And if they leave, they hunt them down and put them back into the house... "75 times" in one case.

Keep digging buddy.

[CompletelyNumb]

Well, that IS what the article says. I admit I dont understand the benefit of providing housing to the homeless, unless it comes with some sort of plan to get them out in a positive way. i cant imagine theyre giving away free housing for life.

[Sugarphreak]

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[msommers]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
Shelters just make more sense because they are a supervised environment where assistance and monitoring if preventable. There are ground rules spelled out, social interaction, and provides central place to give people access to programs.

Housing only makes sense once people are up and running and able to look after themselves, and it is best provided as low income rental housing.

This only confirms that you have no idea what you're talking about.

There are housing programs exactly like that. I would know, I work at three of them.

[Sugarphreak]

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[msommers]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak


In Calgary where we have a proper model for this, not Medicine Hat, right?

Wow

[01RedDX]

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[Sugarphreak]

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[01RedDX]

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